Good morning Mission. And welcome to Virus Village, your daily data dump.
During the UCSF Grand Rounds yesterday, there were discussions on “herd immunity,”cheap fast testing and healthcare worker stories. “Herd immunity” is a term which has been thrown around without much care during the pandemic. In a nuanced and intelligent conversation, Dr. Trevor Bedford hypothesized achieving a lower level than “classical” herd immunity, which would depend on reducing the level of “social connectivity.” When asked, he conceded he could “predict how the virus is going to behave better than I can predict how people are going to behave.”
Thanks Doc. I still can’t predict how I’m going to behave.
The absence of fog these days should not lead you to think the numbers are any clearer. Cases, including two new deaths, and hospitalizations remain high, while the positivity rate remains low and the R number continues to foretell a slowing but relentless spread.
Scroll down for the numbers.
HiGeorge, a data visualization startup, developed some new visualizations for Mission Local, which we will be using and fine-tuning in the days to come.
Another 20 positive cases were added to the Mission, bringing us to 1124 total cases. The hardest hit neighborhoods, other than the Mission, continue to include Bayview Hunter’s Point, Tenderloin, Visitation Valley, the Outer Mission and Excelsior.
The seven-day average of daily cases for the week ending August 7 was 91, raising the number past 90 again, where it’s been for over a month. Though Newsom and state officials say the state reporting problems have been fixed, the DPH continues to warn that cases and tests are underreported.
For the week ending August 7, the seven-day rolling average positivity rate remained slightly below 3 percent. DPH reports an average of 3819 tests per day over that week. Their goal is 1800.
One Covid positive patient was released from ICU yesterday, reducing the number of Covid positive patients to 116. DPH reports a slightly improved hospital capacity, with 79 ICU beds, and 348 Acute Care beds available as of August 12.
Depending on whose model you choose to look at, our local R number ranges between .92 and 1.06. California’s range is roughly similar, suggesting the spread is likely to be “stabilizing” in the near future.
The City’s Latinx community continues to account for the majority of cases.